Why is it a problem, or what problems has it been causing in NYC? I understand the legality is questionable but I don't know why the laws exist in the first place.
The neat property of this business model is that it's actually viral: the way to avoid getting screwed by AirBnBers next door is to rent your place out on AirBnB too, and then go stay in somebody else's AirBnB.
It can be interesting to try and consider the endgame of various startups' business models, basically what the world would look like if the economic inefficiency they exploit is arbitraged away entirely. YCombinator is a world where everyone is an entrepreneur, but the returns to entrepreneurship aren't much better than having a regular job, and everybody works much harder. Google is "information wants to be free", where everybody has full access to information and the market price of that is zero. Napster was that nobody would produce art or music; Facebook is that all socializing occurs online; Uber/DoorDash/PostMates and other sharing economy startups create a caste society where those without technical skills serve those who do. AirBnB's endgame is the destruction of the concept of residency. If they succeed in their mission and arbitrage away all inefficiencies in the housing market, they effectively institutionalize the digital nomad lifestyle, where everybody can live and work anywhere in the globe, and yet never has a permanent home.
I'll let other people judge whether that's a good or bad thing. To me, most social institutions are pretty arbitrary anyway, and I have confidence I could adapt to whatever world comes next. I'll say that they're riding a really powerful trend that's independent of any one corporation or individual: the Internet has made nearly all markets global, and so the idea of being tied to a particular place is becoming increasingly quaint for many people.
The people who will benefit most are the top 10% will will ultimately own most everything and can afford the hotel fare.
In short, screw them.
This in my opinion encapsulates exactly what is wrong with evaluating a complex issue like housing in purely transactional terms. Do cities and their residents have no responsibility to each other beyond "capturing a surplus"?
Certainly what makes their neighborhood interesting and by extension desirable in the first place wasn't the product of purse economics was it? A hotel district where guests stay in apartments formerly occupied by residents doesn't sound like a very interesting or inspiring place.
The idea of mainstream property ownership is dying in America for different reasons, notably easy access to credit and poor financial education of the masses.
What AirBnB offers is a decoupling of "location" and "residency". The post-war dream was the idea that you'd put down roots at the place where you are physically located: you would think of yourself as a resident and a citizen of the municipality and nation whose borders encompassed your home, you would have a home that you would live in for many years and make improvements to for the long term, and you'd put down deep social ties with the people closest to you. The post-millenial dream, for many people, is that you would live anywhere that strikes your fancy, you would meet lots of interesting strangers who would become your friends, and you would have a lot of interesting experiences rather than just the same monotonous daily life. AirBnB is tapping into the post-millenial dream; they don't exist in a vacuum, they exist because a large number of people actually want the world to be that way.
How have we gotten this so backwards?
I'd agree that we need some sort of theory of checks & balances for these new global corporate actors. People seem to have reacted to the dysfunction of governments by creating new quasi-governmental actors, but without realizing they've done so.
It's worth remembering the history of people who love their home but had to move away because some other people loved it more. Those folks who are so attached to the downtown apartments they can't afford anymore? Their neighborhoods became desirable because of a variety of urban renewal projects that largely worked by eminent-domaining & bulldozing lots of poor, mostly black neighborhoods. The original inhabitants - who after the Civil Rights movement were actually excited that they might be treated as first-class citizens - had their communities eviscerated, and still haven't recovered.
And then if you go back further, all of America is founded on the genocide and conquest of the Native Americans, many of whom loved their home and had to move away because the location was highly desirable for settlers.
And if you go back further, many of those tribes themselves stole territory from other more peaceful tribes. The Comanche and Aztecs, for example, practiced slavery and human sacrifice for rival tribes captured in warfare.
You could look at this as part of a long chain of humans kicking out other humans whose lands they covet. In the grand scheme of things, it's actually rather polite, as the original owners are being paid for the use of their properties and aren't even giving them up.
I think Airbnb is a good idea with regulation that limits the number of weeks you can rent out your place.
Thanks, universally-slandered rent-control! Living in this city makes me realize how cargo-culty a lot of HN economics is.
However, I live here, and it's incredible. Every time some economist (or, worse, economics enthusiast) makes a ludicrous claim like "rent control is objectively and universally agreed upon to be bad" I just laugh. Montreal routinely ranks as one of the best cities in the planet (and I agree with that assessment), so clearly it's not as black-and-white as it's made seem.
Being in a rental building that's all people with at least one year leases is different from being in a building where a third of units are hotel rooms. It'd be one thing if the landlord had chosen to have that kind of mixed building and let renters know up front. But in a lot cases it is being done without the permission of the landlord and in every case it is being done without disclosure.
At the block level, living on a block with residential housing is different from living on a block with four hotels. I'm in favor of loosening zoning rules, but as long as they exist we shouldn't reward people for breaking them. Not only does that encourage other anti-social behavior it also reduces the pressure to reform the laws.
Also, 2 bedrooms. 1 single shared family room for 4 means we have to go to bed with the kids at 7pm. Yeah some hotels have those interconnected room things, but until you see it for yourself it's hard to know things like is the door handle in the second room high enough that the kids can't reach it and get out into the hall in the middle of the night.
I'll keep it in mind though. Thanks.
Just be honest and say you like it cause its cheaper and you think your vacation is more important than the needs of residents.
AirBNB clearly identified a market under-served by the existing hotel industry.
And please let's keep this civil.
And extended-stay hotels accept any length of reservation.
In fact, this is a major factor in urban planning. Assuming that this is unique to AirBNB is poorly thought out.
I think there are only a few cities, like NYC, where it creates a significant problem. Where it is a problem, laws and regulations should be enacted in response and companies like AirBnB should be cooperative.
The argument that zoning laws reduce housing costs is backwards.
The only reason people want to convert long-term housing to short-term rentals is bad zoning that has led to a shortage (and thus high prices) of short-term rentals.
The solution to that, as is the solution to high housing costs in general, is to build more housing.
Which is the thing zoning laws stand in the way of.
The city is becoming a place for tourists and the wealthy because tourists and the wealthy have decided they want to live in the city. AirBnB and rising prices more broadly are an effect of this, not a cause of it.
When people are willing to pay more to live somewhere, then prices there rise, and people that can't afford to pay those prices are forced to live somewhere else.
You can try to fight this by fighting the symptoms, like regulating AirBnB, or like Prop 13, and while you might advantage a few grandfathered-in homeowners, you're going to end up with negative externalities that will just screw over the poor even more.
The question we should be asking, as a society, is the new status quo one we want? Is it making life better overall? Or is it one that only a few of us want, because they're getting rich while the rest of us are getting more hard done by?
If tech is pushing us to a new status quo, and it's one we want (like a lot of medical technology), then that's great, the societal conversation will be short: yes, we like it, let's go.
If the tech is pushing us to a new status quo that we don't want, that's when we need to reevaluate, and maybe regulate it.
Here's a little video that explains it, for those that haven't yet heard of the tragedy of the commons:
Case in point, I rented one once to try it out. It was supposedly non smoking.
The entire place reeked of cigarettes. Upon complaining to the owner, she said she had clear rules but the previous guests had been over smoking, doing drugs, the stripper they brought over wrote all over the mirror in red lipstick, etc.
Now picture a situation where you live in a building that you picked because it seemed generally safe, quiet, etc. and seemed to have a certain kind of resident that you felt comfortable living with.
That all goes out the window when a significant chunk of your building becomes a nightly revolving door.
I'm not going to comment on the rent or housing issues. However there are plenty of reasons why people who live somewhere might be upset to see their building turn into such a place.
Lots of nice places are now rented in AirBnB for what amounts to their old monthly rent but now asked for for a weekly rental or less.
Property can be empty half the time and Airbnb takes a massive commission on the earnings.
The landlords on AirBnb are a small fraction of all the landlords in the rental market.
It's entirely possible that there is a massive churn of properties. Landlord try AirBnb a few months and revert back to long term renting because it was much hassle and not as much profitable.
I for one, have noticed that.
It means people who rent whole units as a business, as opposed to persons renting a room in their house, or renting their home while they are away.
But the fact that they are kept that way instead of reverting to regular residential renting means that they are indeed more lucrative.